John writes, “For every $20,000 (give or take) Allen Iverson gets paid per basket in the U.S., there's a determined competitor in an almost third world country getting paid pennies on the dollar to do the same thing better.”
I agree. While I admire the Americans, I sometimes find myself rooting for other countries because they’ve trained equally hard under less-than-ideal conditions. Whereas standout Americans can train in swanky mountainside resorts, and appear in everything from cell phone commercials to chicken soup ads, athletes in other countries don’t get the star treatment, luxurious surroundings and multimillion dollar deals.
Take China. “...even in this brave new world of hyper-athleticism, no country systematically trains its kids as young and hard as China does,” says TIME Asia. China has 3,000 state-funded sports schools; children are usually sent to these before the age of nine, regardless of their interest in sports!
They live at an institution, focus completely on sports, give up their childhoods nd see their parents once a year. They’ve got to be strong and disciplined, because their system of training is brutal. TIME calls this system “China’s athlete factories,” and China calls their sports program – which is focused on the Olympics and follows the Soviet model in a form of socialist sports servitude – “‘Winning Pride at the Olympics.’”
For example, in one school, girls age six or seven have to do the splits for thirty seconds, while their 154 pound coach sits on their legs. “No matter how tough the girls are, no matter how much resolve they have mustered, the tears come within seconds.” This is just one example of what these athletes go through, or are forced into, by the government.
So while part of me wanted the U.S. men’s gymnastics team to medal, I also hoped China would pull it off too – but they didn’t. Nor did the women’s team, who placed a distant seventh.
While the Olympics bring Americans unity and patriotism, it also reminds us that we’re incredibly privileged to have what we do, and that we’re not the only country with athletes worthy of immense respect.
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